Latest news with #EmmaWarren
Daily Mail
22-07-2025
- General
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Mother's fury as bungling Ryanair staff serve spaghetti bolognaise that was so hot it burned her son's leg through his denim shorts
Ryanair has been accused of heating a portion of kids' spaghetti bolognese to such a high temperature it scorched a young child's leg through his denim shorts. Six-year-old Harry Warren was badly burned when the meal slid off his tray table into his lap on a flight between Exeter and Faro in Portugal. His mother Emma has claimed that the Ryanair cabin manager's response to the incident was to immediately blame a colleague. 'The cabin crew failed to respond and just stood gormlessly watching me', she said. 'The cabin crew seemed clueless in an emergency situation. The cabin manager's words to me were: "sorry, they're new".' Not only did the burn mean Harry's holiday was ruined, it took the family weeks to even find an email address to complain and warn the budget airline about their dangerous tables. Mrs Warren has called Ryanair's response to the incident, and the customer service that followed, 'absolutely awful'. 'When I wrote to Ryanair to inform them of how it happened and to prevent happening again to another passenger, they pretty much blamed me and gave no apology', she said. 'They have very little regard for anything other than making profits', she claimed. The Warrens, from Somerset, were heading to Portugal for their summer holiday when the pasta and sauce poured into Harry's lap. The schoolboy was left with a painful blister on his leg, which later burst and left him with a large wound. His mother told MailOnline: 'After take off they took our food orders, which included a spaghetti bolognese for my son. 'I placed it on the table in front of him and it slid straight off into his lap. It was so hot, from microwaving I guess, it burned him through his denim shorts'. The incident took place in 2023 but Mrs Warren, managing director of an award-winning recruitment agency based in Taunton, came to MailOnline after an incident this month when Ryanair passengers were injured when they jumped from a wing during a bungled evacuation in Majorca. She said: 'He had a blister the size of a twenty pence piece which popped and resulted in a wound. 'Our initial thoughts on returning to the UK was to contact Ryanair to inform them. But it took me three weeks to find a way to reach them but I eventually found an email. 'We wanted to explain how items just slide off their tables and they're not fit for purpose. In addition that their staff seemed to be lacking in training and experience and their response was awful'. She added: 'I took legal action but they refused for nearly two years to issue accident reports and when they did, as ordered by a judge, they were not factually correct and created so much ambiguity I was unable to continue. They even threatened to counter sue me as the one at fault'. MailOnline has asked Ryanair to comment. It came weeks after Ryanair cabin crew were blamed for allegedly bungling the evacuation of a holiday flight that left passengers with broken bones after they were forced to jump from a wing due to a false fire alert. Several people ended up in hospital after getting seriously injured when panic spread onboard the jet from Palma in Majorca to Manchester on Saturday, July 5. The airline was accused of playing down the incident by claiming passengers only suffered 'very minor injuries' like ankle sprains in a statement where they 'sincerely apologised' to those involved. Danielle Kelly, 56, whose right leg and left arm are now in plaster, claims people started 'jumping for their lives' after a member of the cabin crew with a phone to his ear ran down the plane shouting: 'Everyone get off the aircraft now, everyone evacuate'. Air crew apparently told travellers to leave behind their belongings 'in case there is a fire and the plane explodes' which, passengers said, only added to the panic. An aviation expert told MailOnline today that the cabin crew and passengers shouldn't have found out that there was a fire warning - the reason panic spreads really quickly and often unnecessarily. The expert said that cabin crew should remain calm and are trained not to evacuate until instructed by the captain over the PA. The pilot and co-pilot have a checklist to complete, include shutting down the engines and lowering the flaps, before ordering an evacuation to ensure that passengers can can slide off the wing without serious injury. In Majorca Ryanair cabin crew deployed the emergency slides at the front doors but passengers sitting in the middle claim they were left with no choice but to jump up to 18ft from the wings onto the tarmac. When done properly, the drop should be around 4ft, MailOnline understands. Ryanair has blamed 'a false fire warning light indication' - and insists that passengers only suffered 'minor injuries'. There is a possibility that passengers panicked and decided to open the overwing exits without being told to, MailOnline's expert claimed. But people on board blamed the staff for sparking panic.
The Guardian
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘That's where I found my family': dancefloor devotees on hedonistic moves and healing grooves
Emma Warren, author of Dance Your Way Home and co-curator of the festival: I remember someone asking me, 'Where's your happy place?' I said it's in the middle of the dancefloor. They thought that was funny, as most people would think of somewhere solitary, in nature, under a tree, but I was like, no, my happy place is in the squash, surrounded by a lot of people, where your movement is connected to everybody else's. I've been on so many dancefloors. I remember a very intense drum'n'bass night in Manchester in 1996, Phenomenon One. It was tropical hot, extremely loud, and I had this whole-body experience. It's the state you reach when you've been dancing for a long time, for hours on the spot. Some people might call it trance, but I would just call it really connected, really grounded and really 'in' yourself in a collective way. Dancing is universal, and even when it's legislated against – with the Public Dance Halls Act in Ireland in the 1930s or the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act in the 1990s – people find a way. Because it's about friendship, it's about internal strength, collaboration, all those things that are as much to do with the village green as they are to do with a rave or club. It's just a really normal human thing to do. Dancing makes me feel connected to myself and the people I'm with at a time when my attention is always being drawn away by those who are being paid huge amounts of money to grab my attention. It brings me back to myself and allows me to feel what I'm feeling. And I know that after just a very short amount of time of a very simple groove, I'm going to start feeling better. Dennis Bovell, producer, DJ and musician: I had a sound system in Battersea, south-west London, between 1969 and 1974. It was around that time the Lovers Rock genre started to blossom and my generation were learning to dance with each other. I remember a song of mine called Smouche, and they did smooch, gladly! There were sound systems all over the UK – London, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol – meeting each other and having what's now known as a soundclash. But they were peaceful clashes, displays of who had the danciest records, who could get more people on the dancefloor. Anyone who ever ran a sound system came up against the police, because people would complain about the noise levels. The police would come and say 'Turn it down', and you would, and then when they were gone you'd turn it back up. They weren't used to the volumes that reggae music was being played at. But look at it now. In those days, I think an amplifier would have been at most 2,000 watts, now it's 22,000 watts. My favourite dancefloor memories? As a teenager, when Freedom Street by Ken Boothe came out, it was an empowering moment to be dancing to the sounds of protest. And then Eddy Grant comes out with Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys. His band the Equals had black and white musicians, there was racial integration. I thought it was tremendous that these kind of topics had entered the dance arena and were being celebrated by people dancing. With my band Matumbi, our first gig was at the joint US-UK airbase in Alconbury. We were warned we should play soul music because these US airmen were not really into reggae. We thought, 'They should be into reggae!' So we played one soul tune to start the show and then started playing reggae. We showed them some dance moves and by the end of the evening the whole airbase was rocking with American servicemen discovering reggae from being stationed in the UK. Saskia Horton, founder of Sensoria: My background in dance is hip-hop, house, waacking and krump. My biggest learning ground were house music dance clubs in London, from around 2014 to 2019. It was like an incubator, it's really deep for me: it's where I found myself, where I found my family. What makes house so transcendental is the four to the floor, the heavy bass and consistent rhythm. Once you've lost yourself in the music, it's a journey the DJ takes you on. I'd be dancing three to four hours straight in a cypher [a circle where dancers take turns to share their moves]. I got sick in 2019 and my life changed for ever. I have a chronic illness. My company Sensoria is all about advocating for disabled and chronically ill folks to have a space in dance and music. It started from the point of me becoming sick and losing access to the spaces that I loved. We've created the Sensory Safe Cypher as a place for people with sensory difficulties, neurodiversity and various physical disabilities to get involved in cyphering. Hip-hop has a 'go hard or go home' sensibility, but with Sensoria, the values are slowness, sustainability and de-growth. It is also just about the purely logistical barriers that prevent chronically ill, disabled or neurodiverse folks from getting to mainstream dance events, whether that's access to the building, or the lack of a quiet space, or no seating. Basically, this is me finding my way back to what I held so dear. Jeremy Nedd, choreographer: I come from a formal dance training but my beginnings, my true connection to dancing, was at family events. I grew up in Brooklyn in a big Caribbean family, we would dance to Soca and a lot of the old soul hits. I felt free, no constraints, no right, no wrong. There's what the youth are now calling 'aura': when you see someone move and they have a sense of self, a kind of ownership of how they can handle a dance move and they just glow, it creates a certain energy around them. I try to carry that same feeling from those family events into what I make now. In my piece From Rock to Rock we use the Milly Rock, among other social and viral dances. It started as a joke with a couple of friends: what happens when you take a dance that is not considered rigorous or virtuosic and really start to mine it and see what else is there? The Milly Rock was created by the rapper 2Milly: it's essentially a gesture where you swipe side to side, and it got caught up in a court case with the video game Fortnite, around copyrighting movement and intellectual property. Who can own a dance movement? There's a whole history of appropriation where folks aren't getting their dues from things they created. Especially when they come from black spaces of creativity. The dancefloor is a beautiful space, a space to be in exchange, to share energy and joy. But the dancefloor is very digital now. Milly Rock comes from Brooklyn but I've watched people gives tutorials on it in eastern Europe, and they acknowledge where it comes from. Linett Kamala, DJ, academic and interdisciplinary artist: I was the first woman to DJ at Notting Hill carnival – I was actually a girl at the time, 15, in 1985. I was born in Harlesden to Jamaican parents, and grew up around sound system culture. I was the type of girl who was like, 'Why can't I do that?' I remember saying 'Make some noise!' on the mic, and they cheered and blew their whistles. And when the bass dropped, that's when the crowd were like, 'OK, she knows.' I just grew in confidence from that very moment. Even though I've been doing it for 40 years, I never take it for granted. I call myself the People's DJ. I will look at my crowd and be like, 'OK, let's feel the vibe here.' I am there to make sure you have the most incredible time. I have an audience from little ones to people in their 80s. I used to be a headteacher, I was super-strict in a grey suit, turning around these tough schools in London. My students would come to carnival and nearly pass out when they saw me behind the decks. Now I'm one of the organisers at Notting Hill, and I run South Kilburn carnival. I'm playing at the Grief Rave at the Southbank. To me, a Grief Rave is not unusual because we have 'nine nights' in Jamaican culture, where we celebrate someone's life, play the music that they loved, and there's a party atmosphere. If you're going through a tough moment, a tune can come on that makes you want to cry your heart out, or it can trigger so many interesting, incredible memories. I think the power of sonic healing is not to be underestimated. It goes back to the heartbeat of the mother in the womb, the vibrational element, and that's why on the dancefloor we all feel so connected. Dance Your Way Home is at the Southbank Centre, London, from 23 July to 29 August
The Guardian
29-05-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Parks are for all, not just paying festivalgoers
Emma Warren, who is quoted in your article (What are public parks for? Inside the debate sparked by London festival row, 24 May), could not be more wrong when she says the Protect Brockwell Park campaign is about 'a small number of people trying to limit a larger number of people's access to space'. Parks are open to everyone, all year round, except during the weeks leading up to and during such festivals. For centuries, local parks have preserved the sanity of parents with young children, allowed children to meet each other and create play with the simplest of means, and permitted elderly people a break from the loneliness of being stuck at home. Parks need preserving because they are egalitarian and provide a meeting space that helps build communities. Very few object to short festivals that treat a park and the local community with respect. What we are seeing now is events companies preying on cash-strapped local authorities to get concert venues on the cheap, make a quick buck from large, prolonged events and move on, often leaving the park with extensive damage that takes months to repair. There is very little transparency as to what changes hands, how much money is actually made, what it is used for and how much the damage costs to fix. Years of savage local authority cutbacks have left parks with skeleton staffing, inadequate to produce the regeneration that these events necessitate. The effects can be cumulative and permanent. The chief executive of the Association of Independent Festivals says the local authority is 'a representation of the local community'. Well, he would say that, wouldn't he? Not many local people feel so PaceForest Hill, London The imposition of loud music on others is as unacceptable in public parks as it is from a phone on the bus or a speaker in the garden. The elementary social decency of not inflicting stressful noise on neighbours and fellow travellers is rapidly disintegrating. And public parks belong to all, not just the minority who want to attend pop KeelingWelling, Kent Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
The Guardian
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I honestly don't know what's going to happen next': Brockwell Park festival row ignites debate over public space
Public parks have been a cherished part of British life since the 19th century; for the Victorians they represented a 'commitment to cultivate public good within the public realm'. But differing interpretations of this vision for municipal green space are at the heart of a debate over a very 21st-century issue: music festivals. This week, the row over mass music gatherings in Brockwell Park, south London, has injected fresh impetus into some age-old questions: exactly what are public parks for, who should have access to them and for how long? On one side stand the thousands of festivalgoers who attend the events in south London. On the other is Protect Brockwell Park (PBP), the campaign group that counts celebrities such as Mark Rylance among their number and won a high court victory a week ago against Lambeth council whose decision to grant festival organisers use of the park was deemed 'irrational'. PBP's argument is one of proportion. Festivals are fine in principle, as long as there aren't too many. But their critics have questioned whether a small but powerful group should be able to limit the enjoyment of so many. The author Emma Warren who is attending City Splash at the park on bank holiday Monday, points out that the high court verdict came in the same week the supreme court ruled people have the legal right to wild camp on Dartmoor. 'This is being billed as the need for collective space versus protection of nature,' says Warren. 'But actually, I see it as part of a long-established pattern. This is about a small number of people trying to limit a larger number of people's access to space.' For Jen Hawkins of PBP, however, the ruling represents a much needed marker laid down. 'A few years ago they reached a kind of a happy medium whereby, yes, it annoyed a few people, but it was tolerable, and it wasn't fencing off people from their precious green space,' she says. 'I think this last year was a tipping point when the ground was completely trashed for the whole of spring and summer.' This weekend, thousands will attend the Mighty Hoopla festival in Brockwell Park, when Daniel Bedingfield will belt out his garage classic Gotta Get Thru This. On Saturday, the chorus might just carry a bit more weight than usual for organiser's whose resolve is being tested. The Brockwell Park row is already taking place against a backdrop of the rising costs of putting on events, which led a record 72 events being postponed, canceled, or folded in 2024 as ticket prices soared. Despite the challenges, the festivals persist. Wide Awake and the Mighty Hoopla are part of seven events taking place in Brockwell Park. Victoria Park in Tower Hamlets hosts All Points East and Lido; Gunnersbury Park welcomes several gigs including the Smashing Pumpkins, independent dance music festival Waterworks and Fearne Cotton's Happy Place festival; while Crystal Palace sees a series of concerts, including a sold out show by Deftones and Weezer. Hawkins insists PBP are not 'anti-festival'. The group would like to see the Brockwell Park dates moved to later in the year so the park is accessible in summer, an ecological assessment of the impact the events have and the introduction of 'fallow' years. John Rostron, the CEO of the Association of Independent Festivals, says organisers already have to meet a long list of requirements to get licences. 'You have to go through the local authority, which is a representation of the local community, to get a licence and meet all of the relevant health, safety, crime and disorder targets,' he says. 'You can do all of that work but it doesn't mean that every single person is going to be satisfied. We're giving a lot of air time to the handful that are dissatisfied.' 'Is it a nuisance to gather and listen to music together, or is it a nuisance to complain about that behaviour?' asks Warren. 'It strikes me that the idea that a small number of very opinionated and unelected people can stop collective and communal activity is very culturally specific. Globally, this is not normal.' The issue of who uses public spaces and for how long isn't limited to the capital: in Liverpool there is a live debate about Radio 1's Big Weekend taking over Sefton Park in the city this summer. PBP says their campaign is about holding Lambeth council to account and claiming back space from the big companies that own some festivals. The Mighty Hoopla was bought by Superstruct in 2023 whose parent company was in turn purchased last summer by the American private equity giants KKR and CVC. Some acts have pulled out of Field Day, citing KKR's holdings in Israel, while campaigners called for the event to 'publicly distance itself' from the investment firm. Mighty Hoopla put out its own statement, which said: ' … we wish to state our clear opposition to KKR's unethical investments.' Hawkins argues that only 'a tiny amount of money' is going back into the park, with the vast majority going to the companies. 'They're the real winners out of this,' she says. At present all the scheduled events will take place in Brockwell Park, starting with Wide Awake festival on Friday after the council submitted a new application, but more legal challenges could emerge as the summer progresses. 'I honestly do not know what's going to happen next,' says Hawkins. 'I'd like to think it really has set a precedent for future years, both for Brockwell Park and hopefully other public parks across the country, that councils can't misuse their planning powers and get away with it.' Donatus Anyanwu, a Lambeth councillor and cabinet member for stronger communities, said: 'Overall, we believe our events create an important cultural offer for our young and creative borough, while also enabling us to keep London's biggest free community festival, the Lambeth Country Show, as a free and safe event.'
